The Raid: what the action hit starring Iko Uwais meant for Indonesian cinema – and what it didn’t
- The film featuring the vicious Indonesian fighting style of pencat silak was a huge hit, but did not spark a new era of Indonesian action films as expected
- However, its director, and the martial arts stars Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian have since forged decent film careers
The wild and brutal action film The Raid (2011) was the most internationally successful film ever to come out of Indonesia, picking up distribution all over the globe and inspiring talk of a new wave of quality action movies emanating from the country. But that wave never happened, and the Indonesian movie industry is in the same lacklustre state today as it was before The Raid was produced.
Still, the film’s director – a Welshman named Gareth Evans who chose to work in Indonesia – forged a serviceable career on the back of The Raid’s success, as did the film’s hard-hitting martial arts performers Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian. Another director to benefit was Evans’ friend, director Timo Tjahjanto, one of the horror-making duo the Mo Brothers with Kimo Stamboel. Tjahjanto’s tough triad actioner The Night Comes for Us recently premiered on Netflix.
The Raid hit with a bang in 2011, garnering good reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada – North America’s biggest film festival – and US distribution from Sony, who renamed it The Raid: Redemption and gave it a wide release in 2012. The film quickly became a favourite of Asian film fans, who enjoyed the vicious Indonesian style of pencat silak which features in the film – on screen, it’s less elegant than kung fu, and gives an impression of no-holds-barred violence.
The film’s success was down to the approach of its Welsh director Evans, a fan of the action choreography of John Woo and Jackie Chan (who had moved to Indonesia on the advice of his Indonesian-Japanese girlfriend) and the bravery of the Indonesian stunt team, who suffered a number of injuries during the shoot.
Fans thought that Indonesia had arrived on the action scene, but a sequel in 2014, The Raid 2, underperformed in the US, and only The Night Comes for Us has travelled since. Interestingly, neither The Raid nor its sequel topped the box office in Indonesia, although they were still successful, and Evans says that a planned third instalment has been abandoned.
Indonesia has a long history of filmmaking – films were made in the country in the 1920s – but the industry has never consolidated, and distribution is still erratic, although it has been improved by the recent entrance of Korean distributors into the market.